


the crossings of fate

by project_break



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Best Friends, Episode: s02e05 Non Sequitur, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Memory Related
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-08-30 12:26:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8533057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/project_break/pseuds/project_break
Summary: Harry wakes up to a world where Tom is more than just a friend. A twist on 2x05: Non Sequitur.





	1. Chapter 1

Janeway’s voice, “Voyager to shuttlecraft Drake. Prepare for emergency transport. Mister Kim, can you hear me? We're attempting to lock onto you. Harry?” echoes in Harry’s head as he blinks himself awake. For a moment, he’s disoriented. Whatever dream he’s slipped out of has left him out of sorts. When he finally manages to focus on his surroundings, he’s relieved to find that he’s in his quarters, in his bed. The last thing he remembers is running the polaron scan from his shuttle before being beamed back to Voyager. The events of last night aren't immediately making themselves known and, judging by the fact that he’s completely naked when he usually wears pajamas to bed, he feels it’s reasonable to be concerned about where he’s ended up, most likely after a night of allowing Sandrine to coerce him into  _ just one more  _ glass of Draylaxian whiskey following a close call off ship.

But, thankfully, these are definitely his own quarters on Voyager. The lights are at five percent, a low blue glow around the baseboards, and the clock on the table says it’s 06:30, almost half an hour before he needs to get ready for Alpha shift. He sighs, and slides down the pillows to get comfortable again. While there’s no chance he’ll see any more sleep between now and 07:00, there’s no harm in relaxing for a while longer.

His eyes are closed, and he’s settled into a nice state of mindlessness when a sudden silence comes to his attention. The shower. He had been so out of sorts upon waking that he hadn’t noticed it, but now that the sound is gone, the facts are remarkably clear: someone is in the refresher in Harry’s room. Someone was using his shower, and now they’re not.

He sits up quickly, panicked, nonsensical thoughts flashing through his head. He considers confronting the invader. But with what? He’s naked, and a quick glance around the room does not reveal either his clothes or his phaser. The heaviest thing in his possession that isn’t attached to the floor is probably his personal terminal, and he can just imagine Janeway's face if he damaged something that expensive. Running for it is out as well, since in the time it would take him to find clothes and dress himself, the intruder would almost certainly come out and confront him.

_ Think, Harry _ . Who could it possibly be? There are only about a hundred and fifty people on the ship, and no one has ever threatened him. Perhaps it’s an accident? Maybe… it dawns on him, stirring a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Maybe it’s someone he invited in. It would make sense. He can’t recall last night, he’s naked with no idea of where his clothes might be, there’s someone unknown in his quarters. All signs point to the fact that he did the unthinkable: he got drunk and picked someone up last night, and they’re getting ready to head on out the door. He glances guiltily over to the desk where his only picture of Libby holds the place of honor in its silver frame. 

It’s not there.

The sick feeling intensifies. He’s just about to get up and look to see if it’s fallen when the door to the refresher opens with a hiss. 

“Oh, you’re awake. Hope that wasn’t my fault. I tried to be quiet.”

Tom Paris is standing just inside the door of Harry’s bedroom, backlit by the refresher, in a pair of boxers and a white t-shirt with wet spots sticking to his skin. Harry says nothing. He wouldn’t know what to say even if he could.

Tom scrubs his hair with a towel and then tosses it over the back of a chair. The lights in the refresher click off, and for a moment it’s just the two of them, silent in the deep blue: Tom slowly coming closer, Harry staring at him, mouth agape.

“Harry?” Tom sits down on the edge of the bed. “What’s up? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He reaches out, his fingers resting gently on Harry’s arm. Familiar, but also distinctly  _ not _ . “You okay?”

“I…” Harry's mind refuses to get a grasp on this. Tom. Tom Paris. Harry’s best friend, Tom Paris. There is no way. There is absolutely  _ no way _ that Harry would ever… No. Not even if he had the equivalent of an entire brewery of Draylaxian whiskey sloshing around inside him. There is no way he would sleep with Tom. There’s no way Tom would ever sleep with  _ him. _ There’s got to be some other explanation.

“Hmm?” Tom is leaning in closer. Close. Very, very close, in fact. Harry tries desperately to convince himself that Tom is trying to see if there's something wrong with him. But then he can feel Tom’s breath on his lips and he sees the tilt of Tom’s head, and his closed eyes and finally Harry’s muscles do what they’re supposed to do.

His hand lands squarely in the center of Tom’s chest as he leans out of the way. Tom’s eyes flick open, puzzled and a bit hurt. He looks down at Harry’s hand, and then back up.

“What are you doing?” Harry manages, cringing at the croak in his voice. 

Tom looks confused. “I was trying to kiss you.”

A blush creeps up Harry’s cheeks. It’s one thing to suspect it, another to hear it voiced. He’s not sure he’s ever been so embarrassed. “Why?” he asks, and as soon as he does, he can tell it was the wrong reaction.

Tom frowns. “Why?” he repeats. Harry swallows, not knowing what to say. 

“Harry, are you feeling alright?” Tom’s voice is uncharacteristically quiet.

“I…” Harry looks from Tom’s eyes, to Tom’s hand on his wrist, to Tom’s leg, pulled up over the side of the bed. The blush intensifies. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“What’s wrong?”

There are many things wrong here, Harry knows. Things that are deeply, acutely wrong. Because the concern in Tom’s eyes isn’t manufactured any more than the moisture darkening his hair or the texture of Starfleet-issue sheets against Harry’s bare skin. 

He settles for honesty. “I don’t remember this.” 

“This?” The skeptical expression that Tom usually reserves for Neelix’s more enthusiastic recipes emerges. “What’s  _ this _ ?”

_ Take your pick,  _ he wants to say. He twists his fingers in the covers, pulling them a little higher over his body. “Why you’re here.”

Tom frowns. “Why I’m here? What do you mean? Why I’m in your quarters? Why I’m on Voyager?”

Harry breathes in through his nose, trying to stay calm. “Why you apparently spent the night here.”

“You don’t remember.” Tom’s voice isn’t flat, per se, there's a note of disbelief. “You didn’t drink  _ that  _ much, Harry. And even if you did, I don’t get why you’re so freaked out. If memory serves, you haven’t had an issue with me sleeping over before.”

Mindful breathing is not working so well all of a sudden. Forgetting about one night of drunken indiscretion—that’s one thing. Horrifying, yes. Embarrassing, yes. Weird, definitely. But at least approaching the realm of being understandable. Forgetting an entire…  _ relationship, _ however? If that’s what Tom is alluding to. Or maybe he’s saying they have some kind of friends with benefits situation? Hyperventilation is quickly becoming a real threat.

“Harry?” Tom’s hand lands on Harry’s thigh over the blanket and Harry flinches, the touch wholly unfamiliar. He and Tom are pretty hands-on with each other: companionable arms over shoulders, grabby play-fighting on the Holodeck when no one is around to tell them off, cheerfully spiteful hair ruffling when one of them is on their way to the bridge or a meeting and they’re supposed to look presentable. Friend stuff. Not this: oddly gentle and way too forward. 

Tom’s eyes narrow at Harry’s reaction and he tilts his head, squeezing Harry’s leg a little harder, testing. Harry drops his eyes and squirms away. The weight and pressure of Tom’s hand lifts. “I don’t remember,” Harry says, in answer to Tom’s implied question. He stares at the covers so he doesn’t have to look him in the eye. “As far as I know, you never have.”

There’s a beat of silence. And then two. And then three. Harry doesn’t look up. He doesn’t dare. He’s a coward.

“Please tell me you’re joking,” Tom says, finally.

Harry shuts his eyes. He shakes his head. Tom breathes out roughly, and the resulting gust of air sends a shiver over Harry’s shoulders. He tightens his grip on the blankets and shifts away incrementally. Logically, he knows that he’s trapped by the window on one side and Tom on the other. Moreover, he knows that Tom — assuming the laws of the universe have kept at least some things sacred and Tom hasn’t had his personality replaced— wouldn’t do anything to intentionally make him uncomfortable. But fight or flight is hard to overcome, and he’s not one prone to fight.

“What day is it?” Tom asks. And Harry opens his eyes, glancing up to see a shrewd hope on Tom’s face. It’s a smart question, and one Harry hadn’t thought to ask. Maybe he’s missing time. Maybe he’s missing  _ a lot  _ of time. Maybe the accident in the shuttle craft scrambled his brain.

“49011,” he replies.

“So you’re not missing days.” Tom frowns. Harry’s short-lived dreams sink along with his heart. “What’s the last thing you remember?” Tom asks, as though that’s going to solve anything. But Harry is dutiful in his reply. 

“Piloting a shuttlecraft back to Voyager.”

“A shuttlecraft? Harry, you haven’t been off ship in at least three weeks!”

There's the wrench in the works. “What?” Harry asks, faintly.

“The last time you left Voyager was weeks ago. You joined the away team to collect readings from an L-class planet. You very nearly brought a member of the predominant species of fauna back with you. B’Elanna had to pry it off you with a pair of pliers.”

“I don’t remember that.” It doesn’t sound even remotely familiar.

“What  _ do  _ you remember?” Tom asks, and that’s probably a sensible place to start. With a clear line of interrogation open, his posture is relaxing and Harry finds himself doing the same. Having an investigation to focus on is good. He’s a problem solver. Working toward a solution is what he’s best at.

“I remember us being trapped in the Delta quadrant in pursuit of the Maquis ship, and their crew being integrated with ours. I remember finding Neelix and Kes. I remember being stuck in a holographic rendition of  _ Beowulf. _ ” He swallows. “I remember you saving me from that Ferengi trader on Deep Space Nine, and becoming your friend. I remember all the stupid times you’ve tried to set me up with Jenny Delaney, or got me drunk at Sandrine’s.”

“But I’m guessing you don’t remember what I got you for your birthday.”

“A spy-glass?” Harry guesses, hopefully, glancing to the shelf where it’s sat ever since. A replicated brass and wood spy-glass, Tom assured him it was as close to an authentic eighteenth century relic as they would get in the Delta Quadrant, and a nice old-fashioned way to look at the stars. It’s not there. 

“I didn’t think so,” Tom says.

If feels like hitting a brick wall. With nothing to focus on, it’s hard to feel even passingly comfortable with this conversation when every move he makes reminds him how very naked he is under the covers, as well as the probable reason why.

There’s silence. Neither of them knows what’s going on. Harry desperately wishes that he could go back in time as Tom threads his fingers together in his lap and squeezes his hands together, the lines of his body tense with repressing whatever affectionate gesture he instinctively wants to make. It’s funny, Harry thinks, how he can tell that there’s an instinct there, tuned by experience. Whatever Tom remembers happening between them, whether or not Harry recalls it, was real.

It’s Tom that finally splits the silence. Of the pair of them, he’s always been the one to break for decisive action. “Come on,” he says. “Alpha starts in an hour, and we’d better get you to the Doctor before then.” He stands up and starts fishing for his clothes, which Harry notices are mostly heaped in the semblance of a pile at the foot of the bed. Harry himself doesn’t move. He just sits, twisting the coverlet between his fingers. 

Tom pauses and glances up at him. “Aren’t you going to get dressed?” he asks. 

“I, uh…”  _ Don’t force me to say it _ , Harry thinks, glancing at the floor, pinching a piece of the blanket. Tom gets it, though. It only takes him a moment. 

“Oh,” he says. “Right. You’re not comfortable with me—” he cuts himself off, shakes his head. “Let me finish up here and I’ll wait for you out in the corridor.” He does as promised, and quickly. He doesn’t check to make sure the coast is clear before he steps out of the room and the doors whoosh closed behind him, which makes Harry’s brain kick into overdrive as he slips out of bed to find clean clothes in a hurry.

Tom’s not nervous about being seen leaving Harry’s room, which would imply either that they’ve been so discrete that nobody would think twice about the possible causes of Lieutenant Paris leaving Ensign Kim’s quarters at 06:45 in a rumpled uniform with wet hair, or—more likely, given Tom’s already storied history of poorly hidden liaisons—that  _ whatever  _ is going on between them is common knowledge.

As he’s pulling his blue undershirt over his head, Harry goes over to inspect the area where Libby’s picture usually sits. It’s not there, which confirms his impression when he woke up. But it’s nowhere in the immediate vicinity either. As he gets dressed he looks around the rest of his quarters with a more critical eye. At first glance everything had seemed ordinary, but now that he pays attention, there are small things amiss. There’s an extra plant on the floor next to the couch—a hideous, purple thing which he can’t ever imagine picking out for himself. There’s a book he doesn’t recognize sitting on the table just inside the door. It looks old—there’s a drawing of a late 2000s car on the cover. In the refresher, it’s even more obvious. There’s an extra toothbrush and a tube of hair gel he’d never use.

It’s easier to think with clothes on—and without Tom around—and by the time he’s slipping on his shoes and giving himself a once-over in the mirror, it’s clear to Harry that he’s not suffering from mere memory loss. He would never be able to so completely forget the kind of personal entanglement which has integrated itself into his day-to-day life so clearly. It’s too specific for him to forget just his…  _ time  _ with Tom and to invent the shuttle crash that he very clearly remembers. Not to mention that it’s out of character for him and Tom to be  _ entangled  _ at all. He might indulge Tom’s attempts at getting him to date, but at the end of the day he’s devoted to Libby. To say nothing of Tom’s single-minded and dogged attempts to sleep with every female lifeform willing enough to give him a try.

A knock on the door startles him out of his thoughts.

“Harry? Are you okay in there? We should get going.”

Harry steels himself.  _ One step further in front of the other, Ensign Kim. You’re an explorer. This is just another adventure.  _ He joins Tom in the hallway. Tom shoots him a sideways look then takes a step in the direction of the turbolift. His posture looks painful, arms held stiff to his sides as though he’s working to stop from reaching out and touching Harry in some familiar way. “Well,” he says, smile tight. “Come on.”

Harry follows.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry goes to sickbay and meets someone new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay on this. Life, motivation, etc., have gotten in the way, as usual. This one is shortish, and will eventually be more thoroughly edited, but for the sake of getting the story on the road, here it is! (Next one will be longer.)

“Please state the nature of the medical emergency.”

“Hiya, Doc.” Tom strolls into sick bay like it’s his second home, a familiar, easy-going assurance which Harry finds comforting. Some things, at least, never change. “Got a tricky one for you today.”

“Oh? Hello, Ensign Kim.”

“Hello, Doctor.”

“And what seems to be the trouble, Mr. Paris? Have you bruised something else on the Holodeck?” The Doctor picks up his tricorder and approaches Tom, armed and at the ready. He narrows his eyes. “ _Someone_ else?” His gaze flickers over to Harry, who feels a rush of hot embarrassment sweep over him. _Cool it, Kim._ It could be nothing. He’s probably just alluding to Tom’s habit of playing a bit too rough in basketball.

“Ah, no.” Tom holds his hands up in front of him as in self-defense. “I’m not the patient or the perpetrator this time, Doc. I swear. I’m just escorting Harry, here.” His hand lands companionably on Harry’s shoulder and Harry, although he’s more than used to this kind of touching, flinches automatically. Tom’s hand clenches briefly and then drops. Harry tries to ignore the nausea rising. He’s not sure what’s worse: being stuck in this situation to begin with, or repeatedly letting Tom down.

“Ensign?” The Doctor is pointing the tricorder at Harry now, and faced with the task of explaining the problem to someone else, he finds himself shy. He looks around sickbay to make sure that there’s no one else to overhear. “You needn’t worry, Ensign. We’re quite alone,” The Doctor assures him, guessing his motives correctly. “I’ve sent Ensign Andrik out on an errand.”

“Oh. Okay.” Whoever Ensign Andrik might be. Kes isn't in evidence either. Good. While Harry doesn’t doubt her ability to be discrete, he also doesn’t think he’d be able to handle her inevitable pity.

“Go on, Harry. Tell him.” Harry glances at Tom briefly out of the corner of his eye. He takes a deep breath. He has to do this. As much for his own sanity as Tom’s.

“I’ve… I appear to be missing memories.”

“Memory loss? Sit down, Ensign.” The Doctor herds Harry back onto a biobed and pops the tricorder's stylus free, running it over Harry’s forehead. “How old are the memories you’re missing?”

“I... Uh. I’m not sure, really,” Harry admits, and he looks over to Tom for help.

“They go back about three to five months, at a guess,” Tom offers.

“Three to five months! Do you recall nothing?”

“Well, not exactly…” Harry hedges. He had been hoping that there was a possibility he would be able to get away with not giving the Doctor any specifics. No such luck, it seems.

“Ensign.” The Doctor’s short temper is getting the best of him already. “In order to properly treat you, I need to know the complete nature of your affliction.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Harry glances at Tom again, hating himself for acting so dependent, especially on Tom, whose fake smile from earlier has dropped into a lip-biting look of concern. Whatever Tom sees on his face, it does the trick.

“He’s specifically missing memories about me, Doctor.”

“About you, Lieutenant Paris?”

“He doesn’t remember anything about our relationship.” Harry winces, waiting for the Doctor’s shocked reaction. But it doesn’t come. Instead, he frowns.

“Nothing at all?”

“Nothing at all,” Harry confirms, disbelief and humiliation coming to a crossroads. Is his relationship with Tom _really_ common knowledge on the ship? Does he know the least of it?

“And specifically _those_ memories,” the Doctor says, more to himself than Harry or Tom. “Hmm. When did this start?”

“This morning,” Harry says. “I woke up and I…” he can feel the blush roaring up into his face. Goddamnit. It’s humiliating.

Tom takes pity on him again. “He didn’t remember that I had stayed the night.”

“Curious.” The Doctor makes some adjustments on his tricorder and scans Harry again. “Are there any other symptoms?”

“I don’t know if you’d consider it a _symptom_ ,” Harry says.

“Anything might be of interest, Mr. Kim.”

“The gaps in my memory aren’t _blank,_ ” he admits. “I remember other things.”

The Doctor looks up abruptly. “You’ve created false memories?”

“I don’t know if I’d say that, exactly… I _do_ remember the past, just not the same way that Tom does.”

“And what do you think you remember?”

“Well, uh…” Harry, damn him, looks up at Tom again. Tom doesn’t look back. His eyes are focused on the Doctor’s office door. “They make up a whole alternate history, I guess,” Harry says slowly. Struggling to draw on his own strength. “I remember the past three months—at least, I think I do, I don’t feel like there are gaps in my memory. I just don’t recall Tom and I ever being… _together._ ” He takes a breath. “I don’t remember him ever showing interest, or me ever wanting him to. I remember him saving my ass from that Ferengi on DS9. I remember getting to know him and us becoming friends. Hell, I remember hundreds of evenings spent on the Holodeck and meals together in the mess, but never anything more than that.” He doesn’t dare look at Tom again. He knows that he won’t like what he sees.

“That is _very_ peculiar,” The Doctor says, frowning.  He squints at his tricorder. “Even more so because there doesn’t appear to be anything physically wrong with you.”

“What?” Tom asks sharply, beating Harry to the punch by a nanosecond.

“According to my scans, there are no irregularities in Ensign Kim’s n-grams which would suggest tampering or damage to memory centers. I will conduct further tests, of course, but as of the moment I cannot offer any insight into what the problem might be.”

Harry’s heart sinks. As much as being the victim of brain damage is unappealing, continued confusion doesn’t feel much better.

“Give me a moment to get the necessary supplies. I want to take some more detailed readings. In the meantime,” The Doctor looks at him meaningfully, “take a moment to think about your duties. As long as you have full recollection of the functions of your job on Voyager, I see no reason to keep you out of work. I can have you on your way for the beginning of Alpha shift.”

“Thanks, Doc.” Harry says quietly as the Doctor hurries off to the far side of sick bay.

Tom shifts beside him, the familiar rustle of a hand running through his hair, and sighs. Harry’s constantly anxious guilty conscience kicks him in the throat.

“You don’t have to stick around,” he says, staring at the Doctor’s back on the far side of the room. “You’ve still got some time before Alpha starts. Why don’t you go get breakfast? I’ll be fine here.”

“You want me to leave?” Tom guesses, tone flat.

“What?” Harry turns to him, slightly startled by the reaction. “No, I’m—I’m not trying to get rid of you. I just don’t want you to be stuck here with me, bored to death.”

Tom lets out a hollow laugh. “Look, Harry, tough as it might be for you to believe at the moment, I’m just as torn up about this as you are.”

One more swift kick from Harry’s guilt complex. Of course Tom’s feeling messed up. He’s living with the consequences of this, too. Harry woke up to a relationship he never had. Tom—he cringes even as he thinks it—woke up and lost a lover.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters.

“Don’t mention it.” Tom sighs again. He sits down on the bed beside Harry, a calculatedly safe distance away. “I’m sorry, too. I’m not trying to be pushy, Harry. I just don’t know what to think, you know? I know it’s selfish, but I want answers, too.”

“Yeah.” Silences are starting to redefine their relationship with each other, whatever it was before. Harry can hear Tom’s breathing just barely over the clicking and hissing happening across the room.

“I can leave,” Tom offers, after what feels like hours. “If you want.”

“No!” Harry says quickly, and probably a bit too forcefully. Tom glances over at him. “Sorry, uh. I don’t want you to leave.” It’s an odd half-truth. Having Tom around is reinforcing the constant confusing entanglement of discomfort and embarrassment at his new circumstances. But the prospect of Tom leaving is somehow worse. Tom’s... comforting, is really the only way to put it. He’s familiar somehow, even when he’s not. And if this is only the introduction to a different reality for Harry, he doesn’t want to walk into the rest of it alone.

“Are you sure? You seem uncomfortable.”

“I’ll get over it.” Harry says, trying for jokey with an awkward grin, but Tom takes it in with a straight-faced expression and Harry feels stupid all over again. “I mean…” he stammers. “I don’t mean that…”

“I get it.” Tom favors him with an awkward smile of his own. “Don’t worry about me, Harry. When it comes down to it, I’m concerned about you. Whatever’s best for you, that’s what I’ll do. Just tell me.”

It’s not the kind of thing you say to a friend, no matter how hard Tom might be trying. Harry ducks his head so he doesn’t have to see the look in Tom’s eyes. Friends with benefits. Ha. And who said that Thomas Eugene Paris didn’t know how to love?

“All ready, Ensign? Lie down, please. Lieutenant Paris, get up. You’re in my way.” The Doctor barges in the way he does best, knocking at Tom with one holographic arm to shoo him off the bed. The tray in his hands harbors no less than five hyposprays and one distinctly needle-y looking thing that Harry doesn’t have high hopes for at all. Force of habit has him shooting Tom a look of terror that's only half-faked, and Tom cracks the first real grin that Harry’s seen from him all day.

“Be brave, Harry. I promise I’ll be right here to stop him before he brings out the lobotomy picks.”

“The wha—?” Harry gets as far as asking before the Doctor puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes him to lie flat on the bed with force probably undue the nature of a medical hologram.

“Don’t be absurd, Lieutenant. Either keep your thoughts to yourself or get out my sickbay.”

Hands up in surrender, Tom retreats and Harry resigns himself to his fate.

 

One sore neck and mild headache later, Harry is shooed out the sickbay doors with Tom on his heels.

“I’ll let you know when I have the results of my tests,” the Doctor calls to his back. “And tell the Captain!”

Harry’s so busy working up dread at the thought that he collides with someone outside the turbolift.

“Oof!” the person in question goes down like a sack of bricks as Harry comes to an abrupt standstill, causing Tom — also off in his own little world if his silence is anything to go by—to walk right into his back. It would probably be funny if he weren’t so anxious. He reaches down automatically to help an Ensign in science blues off the floor.

“Thanks!” The Ensign says, shooting him a sheepish grin. “Sorry. Wasn’t looking where I was going.” He waves a PADD in the air as though it explains everything. “The Doctor’s got me reviewing spore culture growth and I guess I was a bit more absorbed than I thought.”

“Hi, Andrick,” Tom chirps sunnily from over Harry’s shoulder and Harry starts, having almost forgotten he was there.

“Oh. Hi, Tom!” The Ensign — Andrick, apparently — chirps. He’s small, dark skinned with a shock of white hair. Harry can’t ever remember seeing him before. Is it possible that Andrick is somehow tied into Harry’s larger problem? The anxiousness in his stomach curls. The ache in his temple throbs. This day just won’t improve. “You guys on your way to the bridge?” Andrick asks.

“Yep,” Tom says, after Harry misses the cue to answer by a few too many moments. “Maybe we’ll see you in the mess later?”

“Sure thing. Hey, Harry—” Andrick peers up at him in a friendly way. “You feeling alright? You’re looking a little pale.”

Harry gives him a shaky smile. “Just ate something off at breakfast, probably,” he says, trying for casual. “Sometimes Neelix overestimates the strength of the human stomach.”

Andrick laughs. “Well, if you’re still not feeling better after your shift, come by sickbay and we’ll take a look at you.”

“Thanks,” Harry says.

Andrick looks like he’s about to keep talking, but Tom saves them both from any further conversation by placing a hand on Harry’s arm and giving him a gentle nudge toward the turbo lift. “C’mon, Harry,” he says. “We’re going to be late if we don’t watch it, and Chakotay’s already out for my blood.”

“Have a good shift!” Andrick says, smiling, and then he’s back off down the hall toward sickbay, staring down at his PADD again.

Tom hits the call button for the turbolift and he and Harry stand side-by-side, not speaking. The lift arrives, and they step inside. Tom asks for the bridge, and then they lapse into silence again.

Harry’s not sure that he wants to tell Tom about not recognizing Andrick. He can probably tell based off Harry’s body-language, anyway. But if he can’t... Something about it seems wrong. Since all of his memory loss so far seems to revolve specifically around Tom and their… relationship, the fact that he doesn’t remember Andrick either keeps pushing his thoughts into a direction he doesn't like. What if Andrick may also be a... an _entanglement_ that he’s forgotten? Oh, God. What if he cheated on Tom with Andrick and then forgot about both of them! He wouldn’t do that, would he? But, then again, he didn’t think he’d ever be with Tom in the first place.

“Are you okay?” Tom’s voice is suddenly very close to his ear and Harry jumps, not realizing he’d closed his eyes. “You’re breathing fast.”

“I, yeah. Sorry.” He gives Tom what is supposed to be a reassuring smile but feels like an attempt to keep from crying. Tom, unsurprisingly, does not stop looking concerned.

“Calm down, Harry, okay? We’ll figure it out.” Tom rests a hand on his shoulder, and Harry allows himself to take it for what it is: comfort, regardless of what it's motivated by. He closes his eyes again, trying to focus. Tom is right. There’s no point in freaking out. He knows himself, and he knows that he would never cheat on a partner, so there’s no chance of that being Andrick’s connection to him. Moreover, his sample size of crew interactions is so low at this point, not remembering two people is hardly proof of a pattern. He could find that he’s forgotten half the crew as the day goes on. Maybe this has nothing to do with him and Tom at all. He just needs to calm down and do his job. Nothing else to be done, no use in trying.

The Turbolift arrives and the doors slide open with a hiss. Harry takes a deep breath, and steps onto the bridge.


End file.
